Thursday, November 30, 2017

Kazan Caves, Votes to Make Tatar Instruction Voluntary, and Puts Survival of Republics at Risk

Paul Goble

Staunton,
November 29 – In a major and possibly fateful victory for Vladimir Putin and
Russian nationalists of various stripes, Tatarstan’s State Council has voted to
make instruction in Tatar entirely voluntary, exactly what the Kremlin wanted
and a move that likely presages similar actions by other non-Russian republics –
and possibly even their elimination altogether.

Now,
only children of parents who explicitly ask for their children to receive Tatar
instruction will it be given for two hours a week; and those children will also
be required to study Russian whether their parents ask for that or not.As a result, there will be enormous downward
pressure on Tatar instruction (graniru.org/Politics/Russia/Regions/m.265934.html).

Tatarstan’s
leaders, having failed to secure Putin’s agreement to the power-sharing treaty
that had governed relations between Kazan and Moscow since the 1990s, had made
the defense of obligatory instruction in Tatar a last line of defense of their
republic’s dignity and talked until the end about a compromise. But now they
have bowed to Moscow on that as well.

The
vote followed a report by the republic’s procurator, Ildus Nafikov, who found
that only 24 of the 1412 educational institutions in the republic were
providing the number of hours of Russian language instruction required by
federal law. Tatar officials and even some Tatar activists tried to put the best
face on this, but not everyone went along.

On
her Facebook page – and Tatar activists have been reduced to that – nationalist
writer and activist Fauziya Bayramova denounced this action as “a shame” and
said it meant that the Tatar leaders had joined with Moscow to throw their
nation “on the ash heap of history” (facebook.com/fauziya.bayramova/posts/1592968940790024).

As
hyperbolic as her words may strike some, they may not capture the entire
seriousness of what has just happened. Putin has been unwilling to make any
compromises with Tatarstan or the other non-Russian republics, he is pushing
hard for a new definition of the Russian nation, and he may now launch a new
attack on the republics as such.

While
that would infuriate the non-Russians, it would please many Russian
nationalists and imperial centralists; and from Putin’s point of view, it would
have another positive consequence: If the republics are dispensed with, that
would require a rewriting of the Russian constitution, an action he could
exploit for other purposes as well.

Consequently,
what many who focus on Moscow rather than on the Russian Federation as a whole
may be inclined to dismiss as a minor event could prove to be revolutionary in
its consequences, leading to the end of anything resembling federalism in
Russia and a harsh new period of Russianization and Russification as well.

Most
non-Russians will not be happy about this, and at least some will try to
resist. But now that Kazan, the capital of the most important non-Russian
republic has twice bowed to Moscow this year, they have few hopes.What they will do in their despair very much
remains to be seen.